30 Days Of Writing: Day 21

Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?

Not very many of my characters have children. Whenever one of my characters do have children though, unless the offspring is in some way integral to the story, I don’t think I show them that much. Patricia, in “To Turn A Blind Eye” has twins, but you don’t see them towards the end of the story, and even then their time is short. Sarena, in my spec script “Colic” has a child, Adam, but of course given the name of the story, Adam is a main “element” of the story.

I think with the harsh conditions my characters are forced to fight though, I subconsciously make them child-less, because children can complicate things in a story, they make more “things” less convenient. Which is why I now must change that. I don’t like when things are too convenient for my characters. Obstacles make things much more interesting.

Looks like things have just gotten worse for some of my characters. I won’t force it though. Almost nothing’s worse than forcing it.

6 thoughts on “30 Days Of Writing: Day 21”

No wee ones in my novel, they would not “fit” the story, however my female protagonist loves them and wants to have them one day (she’s 24) and that is one of the reasons a conflict inside her begins when it comes to being with my boy who cannot have children, or rather, chooses NOT to have them because of what makes him different.
I wrote a NanoWrimo novel where a child is key to the whole story, but we only see glimpses of him, first as a baby then, he just hear of him growing up. He doesn’t become a proper character until he is a teenager because that is when it all becomes relevant. That reminds me, I must one day go back and edit that, it was a good story actually…

Ha, ha, I knew what you meant. Most of my past stories have been about fantastic adventure or sci fi action. I never envisioned children in those stories, but I think by adding them sometimes can put a lot more at stake for the characters involved.